FP Staff List: Essential Nonfiction in Translation

 
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In celebration of Shiori Ito’s BLACK BOX (translated by Allison Markin Powell), we gathered the very best in translated nonfiction to add to your TBR. From Paul B. Preciado’s TESTO JUNKIE (trans. Bruce Benderson) to María Sonia Cristoff’s FALSE CALM (trans. by Katherine Silver), here are eight new books to check out at your local library or order from your fav bookstore.

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Testo Junkie

by Paul B. Preciado, translated by Bruce Benderson (Feminist Press)

Engaging, intimate, and wide-ranging in the best way.

—Jisu

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Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Bela Shayevich (Random House)

Can we just agree that all of Alexievich's books are essential reading? This book in particular is a masterpiece of oral history and showcases the decline and fall of the Soviet Union through intimate, devastating interviews of everyday people.

—Drew

 

False Calm: A Journey through the Ghost Towns of Patagonia

by María Sonia Cristoff, translated by Katherine Silver (Transit Books)

Travelogue, reportage, and more, this book is a haunting exploration of Patagonia.

—Lauren

 
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The Years

by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer (Seven Stories Press)

One of my all-time faves, The Years is impossibly smart and moving, a brilliant cultural and political history of twentieth-century France from a woman who lived through it all.

—Nick

 
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Voices of Chernobyl

by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Keith Gessen (Dalkey Archive Press)

A truly haunting collection of interviews with survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster—I've never been so rattled by a book.

—Rachel

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Philosophical Investigations

by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte (Wiley-Blackwell)

Its status as a poetic breakout star from the canon of analytic philosophy is likely due in no small part to its original English translator, Elizabeth Anscombe, a philosophical luminary in her own right.

Isla

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Night

by Elie Wiesel, translated by Marion Wiesel (Hill and Wang)

Not only is Night a poignant account of Wiesel's survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps, it's also lovingly translated by his wife, Marion Wiesel. As someone who's deeply curious about the author/translator relationship, it's fascinating to me that Marion was his frequent translator.

—Lucia

Black Box

by Shiori Ito, translated by Allison Markin Powell (Feminist Press)

With careful and quiet fury, Black Box recounts a broken system of repression and violence—but it also heralds the beginning of a new solidarity movement seeking a more equitable path toward justice.

 
Lucia Brown